Morris was a 17-year-old British girl and Thomas was a 21-year-old paratrooper when they first met in London shortly before D-Day. After the war, he returned to the U.S. The two wrote letters to each other, and Thomas asked Morris to come to the U.S. to marry him. But somehow Morris misunderstood and thought he’d found someone else, so she stopped writing.

The two eventually married other people. Thomas’ wife died in 2001; Morris divorced her husband after 30 years.

Last year, Morris asked one of her sons to look for Thomas online, and they found his name featured in an article about D-Day that ran in The Virginian-Pilot newspaper. They reconnected via Skype.